The Media Wants To Destroy You

I think it would be funny if the KKK were to complain about media bias in their quest to protect 'white identity'. You know the drill on those folks. Their strategy is to mainly dehumanize black folks with clever language, accuse any white people who aren't on their team is being part of the black conspiracy, make parents worry about their kids, and preach a "we don't hate them, we just don't agree with them" line in order to seem moderate and rational, while hate - no matter how tempered in reason - is still hate. Check it:

"Stand with us Brothers and Sisters. Together we will overcome the forces that are trying to take our country away from us. NOW IS THE TIME!!!!!!!!!" (North Carolina White Knights)

"Just because a person is black or another race doesn't make them bad people. But you should always be careful where you go and who your friends are. Young girls should be extra careful. Many black boys feel extra cool if they hurt a white girl. Some kids don't learn until its [sic] too late." (Just for Kids Page, Knights of the KKK.)

Now imagine them complaining about a media conspiracy against them. It gets everybody riled up. Pretty funny, right? We'd all get a laugh out of that, regardless of poltical affiliations, right? We don't get that humor, because the Klan has been long silenced - forced underground. Oh they're still here and all - but they're not quite what they once were. So we won't get to hear about the African American Media Conspiracy.

Pitt that. But, if you want to hear hate mongers preaching about how the entire media is against them, you need only turn to Daniel T. Zanoza over at the Illinois Family Institute

Currently, state Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who is openly homosexual and HIV positive, has sponsored a bill titled the "Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act" which would legalize "marriage" between same-sex couples. However, the press has not been as critical of this proposed legislation as they were of the PMI initiative -- which would only have appeared as a non-binding referendum on the ballot if the courts had not interceded.

Also, Illinois already has a Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which confirms the will of Illinois residents. If there were any initiative or bill which should be challenged by the dominant media, it is Harris' proposed legislation, because it attempts to supersede the will of the public. Individuals like Harris, and those who support his bill, have been successful primarily with the backing of activist judges and a liberal press. These individuals believe they have a lock on the meaning of social justice and equality. Therefore, they use any means possible to obtain their goal.

Harris himself says the public needs to be re-educated concerning the issue of "marriage." These words are sinister. Just how does Rep. Harris plan to re-educate Illinois residents? Will he and those who share his views use the state's educational system to create a new moral paradigm? That question has been answered many times over. The horror stories about children being exposed to explicit sexual information about the homosexual lifestyle are incalculable. And, with the media on Mr. Harris' side, you may one day have your children telling you that the "marriage" of two women or two men is a positive thing for our society.

Of course, by that time, they might be considering bills that will permit the "marriage" of two men and one woman; or a father and his daughter. Let your imagination run wild because only twenty years ago, what Rep. Harris has planned for our state would have been viewed as an obscene nightmarish prediction of the future.

A few things worth a note before I get into the point:
1. Note the dehumanizing rhetoric. They'll do everything they can to not address queer folks as being actual people.
2. Take notice of the inflation of "will of the people" on the PMI DOMA idea. It wasn't just court intercession - everybody in the know is aware that PMI went to immigrant communities to take advantage of people who don't speak English to get them to sign the petition.
3. Buzzphrase on HIV. Fair game and worth mentioning otherwise. Contextually on the IFI site - definitely an anti-gay dog whistle.

One of the ways the IFI can keep their supporters in the dark ages is by keeping them away from anything that might otherwise open their mind to the possibility that maybe queer folks are actually human beings by essentially attributing anything contrary to the IFI stance as part of a conspiracy to 'normalize' the LGBT community. It's a way of insulating people against things that would change their minds.

It's like this. For 50+ years the LGBT community has been an elephant in the room. Save for a few examples of high profile instants like Stonewall, there was very little public acknowledgment that a sizable portion of the population existed. Call it boomer era conservatism, call it locked doors thinking - whatever. Fact is, 40 years ago if a girl got pregnant before she got married she was sent off to the Dormitory For Lost Girls run by Sister Mary Holywater. If your wife had a baby that had cerebral palsy, the kid would be locked in the basement and rarely spoken of. If your brother happened to be gay, he'd be the black sheep.

Like a lot of our previous assbackwards social conventions are starting to get recognized as being assbackwards, popular media is starting to recognize and engage the fact that everybody knows somebody who's queer and the results you can view while watching shows like Will and Grace or The Sopranos. The media is not serving as a catalyst for change in society, it's serving as a reflection of change in society.

And if you accept the PMI/IFI premise that the majority of the population is anti-gay, then why do these shows do so well? Could it be a reflection that everybody is starting to grasp that queer fear is just one of those old social conventions with little relevance today?

So to offset the fact that people in the United States are getting away from these social standards that have been proven wrong, immoral, and intolerant time and time again - they drum up chump conspiracy theories to suggest that the rest of the United States isn't actually swinging in a socially accepting direction, rather they're the victims of a vast media conspiracy not only to 'normalize sexual deviance', but towards a bizarre end conclusion of 'father's marrying their daughters'.

It's important for these sort of Christian extremists to maintain this insulation between reality and paranoid fantasy, because without it Smith's target audience runs the risk of opening their eyes to the real world around them. And they have to sow a lot of fear into people who support them. Consider the last statement:

Let your imagination run wild because only twenty years ago, what Rep. Harris has planned for our state would have been viewed as an obscene nightmarish prediction of the future.

It's the rough equivalent of telling little kids to keep their eyes closed so the boogey man can't get to them.

SCAM notes the clear intellectual imbalance between Zorn's anti-gay commenters and pro-gay commenters which is exactly why people involved in IFI succeed: the hate tempered in reason, pseudo-intellectualism, psuedo-science, paranoia really only works on those that are not intellectually capable of reaching the very obvious conclusion that there is no threat to anyone from LGBT folks. Rather the only threat is to hucksters like Smith whom, once ultimately proved wrong, will lose their cushy 85,000 dollar a year salaries and be vanquished to irrelevance just like their bizarre antiquated ideology.